sea monsters, land monsters | sbi merpeople au

1 | land monsters

additional content warnings in the introduction. some of them are just so frequent that i'm not going to put them over every chapter

but here's these:
- off-screen minor character death

- illness, malnutrition, mild body decay, brief blood/injury

- nobody's suicidal but they're kind of accepting that they think they'll die

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Beware the land monsters.

The surface was a place full of pretty animals and plants that were unseen in the ocean. There were butterflies, flowers, huge trees, and colorful birds. They were nearly mythical to look at, so different from even the corals and kelp of the water.

There were also land monsters.

Land monsters were the things of ancient myths told to scare little hatchlings. They were just like merpeople, but missing scales, instead covered in blood-tinted flesh ranging in many shades of brown types. Their bare hands came with keratin caps made for ripping, and if they weren't gruesome enough on their own, one could see the tendons and ligaments working under their skin while they ripped you apart. They were smart and they lied, using creative lures to entrap sea creatures so they could take and mangle them. Sometimes the land monsters were even said to wear the teeth of sharks around their necks like some sort of trophy after they'd torn off their fins to eat.

Land monsters were only supposed to be myths, but the number of their sightings only continued to grow.

Panicked merpeople would flutter around, claiming they'd nearly been trapped in a net with small, gleaming eyes framed by creepy tendrils of hair watching above. Others would see four-limbed beige flashes as they surfaced. Fortunately, nobody had actually been taken away in any of those nets before or scrutinized by the stares of cryptids.

Tommy had never been fortunate enough to see a land monster.

Well. Fortunate may have been a bit far, but he wanted to know for sure if they were real, and seeing one in the wild would be more than enough confirmation.

Tommy loved to think about what the land monsters might really be, but some of the members of his mess had downright stupid ideas. One of the elders claimed they were merpeople who had ripped off all of their scales, but merpeople couldn't breathe on the surface, and that was where land monsters always were. Somebody else claimed they were just bald monkeys, but monkeys didn't always stand on two feet.

Tommy didn't really think they were real. He still wanted to see one, he wanted them to be, but something scaleless and furless that used nets to hunt sounded more than unlikely. If their claws were really so good at ripping, why didn't they just hunt like anybody else? It was pretty dumb, if you asked him.

Tommy's older brother, Techno, talked endlessly about myths regarding the land monsters. There were those about young girls who sold their ripped scales to witches for the ability to breathe air, but were cursed to be landlocked. That must've been what the elder was on about. Others were legends of heroes who had slain civilizations of monsters to end a nightmarish bloodshed in their home city. Some tales warned not to venture onshore, as monsters would lure you in and kill you to turn into a decoration. He also didn't think they were real whatsoever, but found interest nonetheless in what ancient storytellers said about them.

Techno's twin, Wilbur, instead took to shutting down any serious discussion of the land monsters. He prattled on each time about how such things were childish and entirely untrue, and that Tommy should really learn some discernment. He really had a stick up his ass about that shit, and he was the main reason Tommy wanted to see a monster.